"Director: Hal Ashby"

• Harold & Maude | DVD | (13/05/2002) from £8.99   |  Saving you £4.00 (44.49%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Black comedies don't come much blacker than cult favourite, Harold and Maude (1972), and they don't come much funnier either. It seems that director Hal Ashby was the perfect choice to mine a load of eccentricity from the original Colin Higgins script, about the unlikely romance between a death-obsessed 19-year-old named Harold (Bud Cort) and a life-loving 79-year-old widow named Maude (Ruth Gordon). They meet at a funeral, and Maude finds something oddly appealing about Harold, urging him to "reach out" and grab life by the lapels as opposed to dwelling morbidly on mortality. Harold grows fond of the old gal--she's a lot more fun than the girls his mother desperately tries to match him up with- -and together they make Harold and Maude one of the sweetest and most unconventional love stories ever made. Much of the early humour arises from Harold' s outrageous suicide fantasies, played out as a kind of twisted parlour game to mortify his mother, who has grown immune to her strange son's antics. Gradually, however, the film's clever humour shifts to a brighter outlook and finally arrives at a point where Harold is truly happy to be alive. Featuring soundtrack songs by Cat Stevens, this comedy certainly won't appeal to all tastes (it was a box-office flop when first released), but if you're on its quirky wavelength, it might just strike you as one of the funniest films you've ever seen. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

• Coming Home (Masters Of Cinema) Blu Ray | Blu Ray | (15/07/2019) from £25.26   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Eureka Entertainment to release COMING HOME; Hal Ashby's compelling and emotional tale of love and loss, starring Jane Fonda, Jon Voight and Bruce Dern; as part of The Masters of Cinema Series for the first time on Blu-ray in the UK on 15 July 2019. Perhaps the most compelling picture ever made about the shattering aftermath of the Vietnam War. Coming Home earned eight Academy Award nominations and won three for Best Actress (Jane Fonda), Actor (Jon Voight), and Original Screenplay. Coming Home is an uncompromising, extraordinarily moving film directed by the great Hal Ashby (Harold & Maude). When Marine Captain Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern) leaves for Vietnam, his wife Sally (Fonda) volunteers at a local hospital. There she meets Luke Martin (Voight), a former sergeant whose war injury has left him a paraplegic. Embittered with rage and filled with frustration, Luke finds new hope and confidence through his growing intimacy with Sally. The relationship transforms Sally's feelings about life, love and the horrors of war. And when, wounded and disillusioned, Sally's husband returns home, all three must grapple with the full impact of a brutal, distant war that has changed their lives forever. One of director Hal Ashby's biggest hits (second only to Shampoo), The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Coming Home for the first time on Blu-ray in the UK. Special Features: 1080p transfer of the film on Blu-ray Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing Brand new and exclusive audio commentary by author Scott Harrison Feature-length commentary with actors Jon Voight, Bruce Dern, and cinematographer Haskell Wexler Coming Back Home [25 mins] archival featurette Man Out of Time [15 mins] archival featurette PLUS: a collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by author Scott Harrison and critic Glenn Kenny

• Being There (1979) | Blu Ray | (06/01/2020) from £17.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  In one of his most finely tuned performances, PETER SELLERS (The Pink Panther) plays the pure-hearted Chance, a gardener forced out of moneyed seclusion and into the urban wilds of Washington, D.C., after the death of his employer. Shocked to discover that the real world doesn't respond to the click of a remote, Chance stumbles haplessly into celebrity after being taken under the wing of a tycoon (Oscar winner MELVYN DOUGLAS), who mistakes his new protégé's mumbling about horticulture for sagacious pronouncements on life and politics, and whose wife (The Apartment's SHIRLEY MACLAINE) targets Chance as the object of her desire. Adapted from a novel by JERZY KOSINSKI, this hilarious, deeply melancholy satire marks the culmination a remarkable string of films by HAL ASHBY (Harold and Maude) in the 1970s, and serves as a carefully modulated examination of the ideals, anxieties, and media-fuelled delusions that shaped American culture during that decade. Special Edition Features New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray New documentary on the making of the film, featuring interviews with members of the production team Excerpts from a 1980 American Film Institute seminar with director Hal Ashby Author Jerzy Kosinksi in a 1979 appearance on The Dick Cavett Show Appearances from 1980 by actor Peter Sellers on NBC's Today and The Don Lane Show Promo reel featuring Sellers and Ashby Trailer and TV spots Deleted scene, outtakes, and an alternate ending PLUS: An essay by critic Mark Harris

• Shampoo | DVD | (08/12/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £5.99

  A modish creation teased into life by Warren Beatty, Shampoo was an offbeat Hollywood hit back in 1975. Made after Watergate, it reflects on the hedonism of late-60s Los Angeles with a sad, somewhat cynical eye. Basically a bedroom farce, fuelled by some famously raunchy dialogue, its comedy is nevertheless underlain with melancholy. Screenwriter Robert Towne was inspired by Wycherly's Restoration comedy The Country Wife, wherein a wily fellow convinces friends of his impotence even while he is merrily seducing their wives. Hence, Towne invented handsome Beverly Hills hairdresser George Roundy (Beatty), who ought to be gay, but emphatically isn't. Shampoo begins on US Election Day, 1968, as Nixon is trouncing McGovern at the polls, and George Roundy is trying to sort his life out. An earnest advocate of sensual pleasure, he beds most of his female clients, from the fretful Jill (Goldie Hawn) to the wealthy Felicia (Lee Grant). Yet George is himself unfulfilled, and imagines that owning his own salon will satisfy him. He asks Felicia's husband Lester (Jack Warden) to back him, but first Lester coerces George into squiring his mistress Jackie (Julie Christie) to a Nixon victory party. Inevitably, Jackie is another of George's girls and, having seduced Felicia's vivacious daughter (Carrie Fisher) earlier that day, George has much to conceal from Lester and Felicia as the evening's festivities unravel. Shampoo shows the 60s turning sour. The characters are rich hippies, superficially liberated but deeply unhappy, and blandly indifferent to the dawning of the Nixon era. The excellent Lee Grant won an Oscar, but Shampoo is Beatty's film. He produced it, had a substantive hand in Towne's script, and deputised the nominal director, Hal Ashby. The film mildly exploits legends of Beatty's real-life sexual prowess, but mainly it embodies his commitment to making thoughtful movies for grown-ups. Richard Kelly

• Being There | DVD | (10/02/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  Hal Ashby's much-praised Being There stars Peter Sellers in what was perhaps his finest comic performance. Chance the gardener has spent his entire life in an old man's house and has no idea of the world outside except for what television has given him. Sellers manages to make his innocence touching and oddly impressive rather than an offensive exploitation of disability. Jerzy Kozinski's screenplay neither entirely endorses nor discounts the twin possibilities that Chance's simplicity and closeness to the natural world give him access to real wisdom, or that he is simply a blank on whom people project what they want to see and hear. What is clear is that he gives his dying friend Ben (Jack Warden) peace of mind and consoles Ben's wife (Shirley Maclaine). Whether he's being groomed for the Presidency or appearing to walk on water, he always does something right, and the same is true for Sellers' minimalist performance. On the DVD: Being There is presented in a widescreen visual aspect of 1.85:1 and has 1.0 Dolby Digital mono sound; it comes with the original theatrical trailer, information about the stars and director and a list of the film's awards. --Roz Kaveny

• Coming Home | DVD | (07/06/2004) from £24.99   |  Saving you £-9.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Both Jane Fonda and Jon Voight won Oscars for their performances in Coming Home, a profoundly moving 1978 flick dealing with the aftereffects of the Vietnam War. Fonda, feeling isolated while her hawkish husband (Bruce Dern) is away in Vietnam, follows a friend's example and volunteers at a veteran's hospital. There she is reacquainted with Voight, an old friend who has returned from the war as a paraplegic. Lonely and disconnected from her husband, Fonda finds love--and fulfilling sex--with Voight. The sex scenes, very steamy for the time, are still provocative. This mature love story is about expanding your horizons, and is both moving and thoughtful. Director Hal Ashby (Harold and Maude) does succumb to melodrama on occasion, but these are forgivable slips. --Rochelle O'Gorman, Amazon.com

• Harold And Maude (Masters of Cinema) (Blu-ray) | Blu Ray | (14/07/2014) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  A glorious mixture of the riotously morbid and joyously life-affirming Hal Ashby's Harold and Maude was an instant counter-culture favourite on its release in 1971 and whose popularity has spread in the decades since to become simply one of the most beloved cult comedies ever made. Following the burgeoning relationship between the gloomy 20-year-old suicide-staging Harold (Bud Cort) suffocated by his wealthy homestead and the sprightly octogenarian Maude (Ruth Gordon) whose bohemian wiles and open-arms approach to living enable his first gentle steps towards embracing existence. With its brilliant script by Colin Higgins a magnificent standard-setting soundtrack by Cat Stevens wonderful performances and Hal Ashby's stunning directorial control Harold and Maude combines a jet-black comic edge with romance philosophy satire and beauty to form a masterfully funny and moving whole. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present this masterpiece for the first time on Blu-ray in the UK. Special Features: Newly restored 1080p high-definition master More on-disc extras to be announced closer to release! 36-page booklet with a new essay vintage stills and more!

• The Last Detail | Blu Ray | (27/02/2017) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  The Last Detail nearly didn't get a release. Columbia, for whom it was made, was alarmed by the movie's barrage of profanity and resented the unorthodox working style of its director, Hal Ashby, who loathed producers and made no secret of it. Only when the film picked up a Best Actor Award for Jack Nicholson at Cannes did the studio reluctantly grant it a release--with minimal promotion--to widespread critical acclaim. Nicholson, in one of his best roles, plays "Bad-ass" Buddusky, a naval petty officer detailed, along with his black colleague "Mule" Mulhall (Otis Young), to escort an offender from Virginia to the harsh naval prison at Portsmouth, NH. The miscreant is a naïve youngster, Meadows (Randy Quaid), who's been given eight years for stealing $40 from his CO's wife's favourite charity. The escorts, at first cynically detached, soon start feeling sorry for Meadows and decide to show him a good time in his last few days of freedom. Ashby, a true son of 60s counterculture, avidly abets the anti-authoritarian tone of Robert Towne's script. Meadows is a sad victim of the system--but so too are Buddusky and Mulhall, as they gradually come to realise. A lot of the film is very funny. Nicholson gets to do one of his classic psychotic outbursts--"I am the fucking shore patrol!"--and there are some pungent scenes of male bonding pushed to the verge of desperation. But the overall tone is melancholy, pointed up by the jaunty military marches on the soundtrack. Shot amid bleak, wintry landscapes, in buses and trains and grey urban streets, The Last Detail is a film of constant, compulsive movement going nowhere--a powerful, finely acted study of institutional claustrophobia. On the DVD: The Last Detail disc doesn't have much in the way of extras. There are abbreviated filmographies for Ashby, Nicholson and Quaid (though not for Young) and a trailer for A Few Good Men (1992). The mono sound comes up well in Dolby Digital, and the transfer preserves DoP Michael Chapman's subtle, subfusc palette and the 1.85:1 ratio of the original. --Philip Kemp

• The Last Detail | DVD | (05/08/2002) from £19.99   |  Saving you £-7.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  The Last Detail nearly didn't get a release. Columbia, for whom it was made, was alarmed by the movie's barrage of profanity and resented the unorthodox working style of its director, Hal Ashby, who loathed producers and made no secret of it. Only when the film picked up a Best Actor Award for Jack Nicholson at Cannes did the studio reluctantly grant it a release--with minimal promotion--to widespread critical acclaim. Nicholson, in one of his best roles, plays "Bad-ass" Buddusky, a naval petty officer detailed, along with his black colleague "Mule" Mulhall (Otis Young), to escort an offender from Virginia to the harsh naval prison at Portsmouth, NH. The miscreant is a naïve youngster, Meadows (Randy Quaid), who's been given eight years for stealing $40 from his CO's wife's favourite charity. The escorts, at first cynically detached, soon start feeling sorry for Meadows and decide to show him a good time in his last few days of freedom. Ashby, a true son of 60s counterculture, avidly abets the anti-authoritarian tone of Robert Towne's script. Meadows is a sad victim of the system--but so too are Buddusky and Mulhall, as they gradually come to realise. A lot of the film is very funny. Nicholson gets to do one of his classic psychotic outbursts--"I am the fucking shore patrol!"--and there are some pungent scenes of male bonding pushed to the verge of desperation. But the overall tone is melancholy, pointed up by the jaunty military marches on the soundtrack. Shot amid bleak, wintry landscapes, in buses and trains and grey urban streets, The Last Detail is a film of constant, compulsive movement going nowhere--a powerful, finely acted study of institutional claustrophobia. On the DVD: The Last Detail disc doesn't have much in the way of extras. There are abbreviated filmographies for Ashby, Nicholson and Quaid (though not for Young) and a trailer for A Few Good Men (1992). The mono sound comes up well in Dolby Digital, and the transfer preserves DoP Michael Chapman's subtle, subfusc palette and the 1.85:1 ratio of the original. --Philip Kemp

• 8 Million Ways To Die | DVD | (12/09/2011) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Jeff Bridges plays alcoholic LA drugs cop Matthew Scudder who shoots a suspect in a raid and loses both his job and his wife. He tries to clean up his act and quit drinking but this isn't easy when a hooker named Sunny begs him for protection and winds up dead. Scudder is drawn back into a world of vice as he hunts down her killer among L.A.'s seedy underbelly of pimps and drug dealers. Agripping final film from legendary director Hal Ashby with screenplay by Oliver Stone and a supporting cast led by Rosanna Arquette and Andy Garcia.

• Shampoo | Blu Ray | (05/11/2018) from £17.99   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  Warren Beatty and Hal Ashby team up for a bedhopping farce that doubles as a sly political satire Shampoo gives us a day in the life of George, a Beverly Hills hairdresser and lothario who runs around town on the eve of the 1968 presidential election trying to make heads or tails of his financial and romantic entanglements. His attempts to scrape together the money to open his own salon are continually sidetracked by the distractions presented by his lovers played brilliantly by GOLDIE HAWN (The Sugarland Express), JULIE CHRISTIE (Don't Look Now), and LEE GRANT (in an Oscarwinning performance). Star WARREN BEATTY (Bonnie and Clyde) dreamed up the project, cowrote the script with ROBERT TOWNE (Chinatown), and enlisted HAL ASHBY (Harold and Maude) as director, and the resulting carousel of doomed relationships is an essential seventies farce, a sharp look back at the sexual politics and selfabsorption of the preceding decade. Features: 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack Alternate 5.1. surround soundtrack, presented in DTSHD Master Audio New conversation between critics Mark Harris and Frank Rich Excerpt from a 1998 appearance by producer, cowriter, and actor Warren Beatty on The South Bank Show PLUS: An essay by Rich

• Bound For Glory | DVD | (15/09/2003) from £19.99   |  Saving you £-7.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  By strumming his guitar with words of inspiration Woody Guthrie instilled hope in the hearts of downtrodden Americans everywhere during the 1930s Depression. The extraordinary life of this legendary balladeer and poet is captured in this elegantly crafted beautiful film directed by Hal Ashby that won two Oscars (Best Cinematography Best Original Song Score/Adaptation Score). It is 1936 and the Great Depression is forcing droves of people from the dust bowls of Texas to the allur

• Being There | DVD | (23/02/2009) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Peter Sellers stars as Chance a dapper mentally deficient gardener who has spent his entire life in the home of a rich recluse. He has learned of the outside world only through television and speaks in minimal easy-to-digest sound bites. When Chance steps out into the world for the first time though his idle sayings are interpreted as philosophical wisdom by a wealthy industrialist and soon after swallowed whole by the American public to the point where Chance becomes a media celebrity...

• The Landlord | DVD | (01/10/2012) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Elger Enders (Beau Bridges, The Descendents) buys an apartment block in Brooklyn with plans of renovating it and increasing his considerable wealth. However much to his annoyance the tenants refuse to be evicted. As Elger is forced to interact personally with his tenants he finds out more about their personal lives, slowly his pompous and unforgiving nature is worn away by their stories and troubles and he emerges as a caring and thoughtful young man.

• Harold & Maude - Paramount Originals (includes Limited Edition reproduction film poster) | DVD | (23/07/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  A classic cult film that features one of the screen's most unlikely pairs. It will defy everything you've ever seen or known about screen lovers. Bud Cort is Harold a young man bored with wealth but interested in death. And Ruth Gordon is Maude a wonderful old rascal who can see nothing but good intentions in the world. Hal Ashby (Coming Home Being There) directed from Colin Higgin's (Foul Play) first script. An outrageously funny and affecting film that proves love has no boundari

• Shampoo | DVD | (13/01/2003) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Shampoo was billed as a sex comedy when it was first released in 1975, cashing in on the priapic reputation of its leading man and producer Warren Beatty. More than a quarter of a century on, that tag looks somewhat inadequate. Against a background of aimless bed-hopping and power-broking, Shampoo satirises the cultural and political wasteland of late-1960s Beverley Hills society. Ladies who lunch are married to ambitious, unfaithful husbands with mistresses; their daughters are dysfunctional; and the mistresses spend more time with their dogs than their lovers. George, the philandering hairdresser, is the common denominator who services them all. But he has private ambitions and is hustling for investment in his own salon. Beatty's restless performance as the man who can't say "no" is intriguing, waking up suddenly and too late to the chaos and vapidity of his life. The humour is bleak, sharpened by the background of Nixon's ascent to the White House: Shampoo is a cynical by-product of the Watergate scandal. There are good performances from Julie Christie and Goldie Hawn as two of George's leading conquests, and from a pre-Star Wars Carrie Fisher as the teenager who tries to seduce him. But Lee Grant garnered the awards as the embittered wife who finally calls "time". On the DVD: Shampoo is presented in 1:85.1 anamorphic widescreen, replicating the glossy production values of the original theatrical experience. The mono Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is well balanced. There are no extras apart from standard subtitles. --Piers Ford

• Being There | Blu Ray | (23/02/2009) from £21.58   |  Saving you £-1.59 (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Peter Sellers stars as Chance a dapper mentally deficient gardener who has spent his entire life in the home of a rich recluse. He has learned of the outside world only through television and speaks in minimal easy-to-digest sound bites. When Chance steps out into the world for the first time though his idle sayings are interpreted as philosophical wisdom by a wealthy industrialist and soon after swallowed whole by the American public to the point where Chance becomes a media celebrity...

• Jack Nicholson - In The Frame Collection | DVD | (29/10/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  This box set features the following films: Five Easy Pieces (Dir. Bob Rafelson) (1970): Although a brilliant classical pianist from an intellectual well-to-do family - Robert Dupea (Nicholson) has made a career out of running from job to job and woman to woman. Presently working in an oil field Dupea spends most of his free time downing beers playing poker and being non-committal with his sexy but witless girlfriend Rayette (Karen Black). But when he is summoned to his father's deathbed Dupea returns home with Rayette where he meets and falls for a sophisticated woman (Susan Anspach). Now caught between his conflicting lifestyles the gifted but troubled Dupea must face issues that will change his life forever. As Good As It Gets (Dir. James L. Brookes) (1997): Nicholson gives a show-stopping performance as Melvin Udall an obsessive-compulsive novelist who takes pride in his ability to affront repulse offend and wound. His targets are random his aim reckless. Last Detail (Dir. Hal Ashby) (1973): Billy Budduskey (Jack Nicholson) a hard bitten wise-cracking foul-mouthed cynical but professional Navy-man is given the loathsome job of escorting a very young sailor (Randy Quaid) to a military prison for a minor crime. Budduskey decides to give the young sailor a life-time of experience in just three days! Easy Rider (Dir. Dennis Hopper) (1969): Two young hippie bikers Wyatt and Billy sell drugs in Southern California stash their money away in their gas-tanks and set off for a trip across America along the way they encounter hitchhikers a drunken lawyer a jail cell a whorehouse and the death of a friend. A Few Good Men (Dir. Rob Reiner) (1992) One man is dead. Two men are accused of his murder. The entire Marines Corps is on trial. And 'A Few Good Men' are about to ignite the most explosive episode in US military history. Universally acclaimed A Few Good Men unites the big screen's biggest stars as Hollywood heavyweights Jack Nicholson Tom Cruise and Demi Moore lead an all star cast in director Rob Reiner's powerful account of corruption cover-up and a relentless quest for justice within the sacred corridors of the US Navy. King Of Marvin Gardens (Dir. Bob Rafelson) (1972): This film is a dark drama about two brothers who team up for an odd real estate scheme involving a Hawaiian island. Jason (Bruce Dern) summons his younger sibling David (Jack Nicholson) a Philadelphia radio personality to join him in Atlantic City to get the deal going. But when David arrives he finds that a local crime boss has had Jason thrown in jail. David intervenes on his brother's behalf and succeeds in bailing Jason out. But the charges won't be dropped unless Jason forgets the Hawaiian venture. So together with Jason's girlfriend Sally (Ellen Burstyn) and Jessie (Julia Anne Robinson) the two brothers try to figure out what to do next. One meeting with the crime boss convinces David that they shouldn't go through with their plans but Jason won't hear of that. Something has got to give...